unanticipated

[hedda62]

I am shortly going to spend a little time sitting outside and reading the first chapter of yunitsa's original fiction novella, and then find something else enjoyable to do, because I have so far spent most of my day:

1) Creating the cover for the print edition of Time and Fevers;

2) Cleaning scale insect off my potted lime tree.

The grossness and tedium of the second will be familiar to anyone who's been unfortunate enough to have this problem. The first is probably equally self-induced misery, but really before I tackle cover #3 I must do one of the following:

a) Figure out how to make LiveQuartz (inexpensive image software for Mac that I got because I am too cheap to pay for Photoshop) actually exercise all the capabilities I suspect it has. Like, for example, saving a draft, instead of flattening all the layers into a final image whenever I quit, including when I am forced to quit because of spinning color wheel of doom (I was just trying to make a piece of text smaller again, and it got enormous instead, with the giant word "unanticipated" plastered across my cover image, and then everything froze. And saved that way, flattened, though I was able to rescue an earlier and less problematic draft. Still flattened but with less to repair).

b) Give up on LiveQuartz and get something that works more smoothly.

Or c) Pay someone else to create the cover. I already have an idea for what I want and I know I can't do it with the skills and software I now possess. But there's a part of me that balks at spending money when I'm not making a whole lot off these books.

I'm not going to share the print cover here, because if any changes are suggested I'd have to start all over again from the beginning, and I'm not doing that. I'll post the ebook cover when it's done (that's simple by comparison since there's only the front and I can pretty much just crop it out of the other image) - but still, no changes. What's done is done, and I am cranky about it. I'm even waiting until tomorrow to upload at CreateSpace to generate the proof, because if that goes wrong I'll cry. Sooo cranky. Though at least it's all cleaner than scale removal.

In better news, it's a beautiful day again, and many things are blooming, and though I still have approximately one million items on the to-do list, at least some of them got done this week.

P.S. if anyone does know how to save a layered draft in LiveQuartz, please let me know. And on a similar Mac note, if you've upgraded to Mavericks, how did it go? I am not planning to do this until at least June, for fear of losing MS PowerPoint creations that I really need, but I'd love to be reassured that this and other disasters won't happen.

Comments

[enemyofperfect]

No experience with LiveQuartz, but looking at their readme, it seems like if you're saving as a .rhif, that ought to preserve layers and so forth, so in theory it should be possible. You're saving, not exporting, right? What happens if you uncheck "hide extension"? </armchair tech support>

[hedda62]

I'll take a look at that next time I get a chance - thanks! I started with an imported .png, so that's probably the issue; it's automatically saving with the same extension? (I really, really need tech support.)

[enemyofperfect]

Yeah, that sounds like a very likely explanation. The good news is that if that is the issue, if you can save it as a rhif file just once -- and then make sure always to work with the layer-remembering rhif, instead of any of the layer-flattening pngs you've already got -- I think that ought to protect your work in progress even when it autosaves due to a force quit. I hope it does, anyway; the current situation sounds so frustrating!

[mmegaera]

Much empathy with the cover creation, if no help because I use InDesign for mine. I bought and paid for a pro cover for Much Ado in hopes that it would improve my sales, and, well, it hasn't so far [wry g]. So unless and until I start selling a lot more of each individual title, it ain't gonna happen again.

[hedda62]

Right - it's not that professional cover artists aren't wonderful, but if their fees swallow most of your sales, not worth it. (I do intend to buy Much Ado, but the current reading list is long!)

[mmegaera]

Thanks. But, yeah, once burned twice shy. It was a worthwhile experiment, though, if only because I'd always have wondered otherwise.

[orockthro]

Have you looked into Gimp? I haven't used it personally, but I hear it's similar enough to Photoshop. Or worse comes to worse you could download a 30 day free trial of PS if they still do that. Not even sure anymore, what with their new fangled cloud shenanigans.
:)
Good luck!

[hedda62]

I did look at it briefly, and picked the other one for some reason, but I'll look again. At some point. :) Thanks.